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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Remembering Eugenics

Eugenics is a well-known low point in
the modern history of science. In the
United States, from the late nineteenth
century to the 1940s, credence was given to
this pseudoscience focused on the notional
‘improvement’ of human populations by
halting the reproduction of supposedly lesser
genes. Less well known is the story of how US
law rendered eugenics intellectually respectable
across the world, supporting programmes
from Canada to Sweden. Ultimately, this
egregious failing led to the enforced sterilization
of at least 60,000 US citizens, and
was used by the Nazi regime to justify its
own programme of sterilization and, later,
extermination.

The book reviewed, Adam Cohen’s Imbeciles, deals with one particular case which led to the Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell which held that persons viewed as mentally defective could be sterilized.

There was a lot remarkable about the case, including the fact that celebrated Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion.

But even more important is the intellectual infrastructure that surrounded eugenics. It was a product of the “best and brightest” thinkers of the era. The review in Nature names several of the leading lights of the movement:

Before Buck v. Bell, eugenic sterilization
had been advocated for decades by US
reformers and scientists, including prominent
biologist Charles Davenport, but it
had been used only sporadically because of
fears that it was illegal. Eugenics itself was
born in Britain in the late nineteenth century,
nurtured by polymath Francis Galton,
a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. The concept
resonated with contemporary interpretations
of ‘social Darwinism,’ which hinged
on engineering the ‘survival of the fittest’ — a
gross caricature of Darwin’s idea.

By 1928, a total of 375 US universities and
colleges were teaching eugenics, and 70% of
high-school biology textbooks endorsed the
pseudoscience in some form. Eugenics was
also endorsed by presidents including Theodore
Roosevelt, funded by philanthropic
organizations including the Carnegie Institution,
and touted by award-winning scientists
such as biologist Edwin Grant Conklin and
the Nobel laureate Hermann Muller, discoverer
of X-ray mutagenesis, as well as prominent
inventors such as Alexander Graham
Bell. Eugenics came to be seen as the solution
to everything from hearing loss to criminality.
In Britain, advocates tended to focus on
segregation and voluntary sterilization. Major
British eugenicists included left-leaning scientists
J. B. S. Haldane and Havelock Ellis,
and supporters included the economist John
Maynard Keynes, social reformers Sidney and
Beatrice Webb, and writer H. G. Wells.

So what can we conclude from this era in the history of science? Largely, to have a bit of skepticism of science.

And both on empirical and moral grounds.

The author of the review calls eugenics “a gross caricature of Darwin’s idea.” But it wasn’t. It was a straightforward application if you buy two propositions:

First, the notion, pioneered early in the century, that it is possible to measure innate intelligence. Even early on, scientists like Alfred Binet cautioned that measured intelligence could be affected by the environment, but the notion that IQ tests measured genetic endowment and that differences among groups reflected innate intelligence became prevalent.

Secondly, the idea that the good of society can override the rights of individuals. One of the most fundamental human rights is the right to procreate. In any decent society, schemes of social engineering should give way to basic human rights. But elites who are convinced of their own superior intelligence and enlightenment are all too quick to decide that the behavior of “lesser breeds” needs to be brought into line with “the public interest,” which the elites are always convinced they embody.